Cannot Sort All Columns in Worksheet

Question

I have 12 columns in my worksheet and everytime I try to sort, it will only let me sort the first 8 columns or the last 4.  If I try to highlight the entire sheet, the Sort option is greyed out.

Answer 1

The marker that you see marks the bottom right corner of a table. If you click that cell, then click on the Table Tools ribbon and select a different table style, you can see where the table starts and ends.

Armed with that information you now know: You have a table in your worksheet that goes from (probably) column A to column G. When you sort, the sort gets applied to the columns in the table. The columns H and following are outside of the table and will not be include in the sort. 

You can include more columns and rows into an existing table like this: with a cell in the table selected, click the Table Tools ribbon. On the very left of the ribbon click the command "Resize Table. Select all rows and columns that you want to include in the table and hit OK. 

Answer 2

ScottStark, the Table Tools ribbon is only visible when the active cell is inside a table. In order to create a table, select the cells with the data and click Insert > Table or hit Ctrl-T

Answer 3

Glad this helped. Can you please mark my post as the answer? This will help other find it more easily.

Answer 4

Thank you for the quick reply.  No blank columns, all had headers and I tried to do the Insert Table and that didn't work either.  What I did see by accident though was on the 8th column (last one it selects), the very last cell in the last row was a symbol that looks like a backwards L, almost as if I somehow only selected those columns to be active.  If I drag on that symbol, it increases the rows, but won't let me increase the columns (see 8796 below in column G).

Answer 5

Hello,

Are there any blank columns in the data? If so, delete them. Or turn your data into a table by selecting the data, then clicking Insert > Table.  Tick whether or not the selection has headers. Any blank columns in your selection will get a header name assigned by Excel. 

If that does not help, post a screenshot where we can see all 12 columns you want to sort.